Lawmakers Can Use Campaign Funds for Home Security, F.E.C. Says

WASHINGTON — Congressional leaders, shaken by last month’s shooting at a Republican congressional baseball practice and a spike in threats to their members, want to be able to use campaign funds to tighten lawmakers’ home security.

The Federal Election Commission, after some debate, said on Thursday that given the threats, it would approve that use, so long as the improvements were “nonstructural.”

The commission unanimously authorized the use of campaign funds to pay for only the installation or upgrade, and the monitoring costs, of cameras, sensors, distress devices and similar security devices in and around lawmakers’ residences. Lawmakers will be required to report those expenses to the commission, but it did not set a cap on how much a lawmaker could spend on the security systems.

The commission had previously approved the use of campaign funds for security systems in a few cases, and then only where they said specific, credible threats warranted the expense. But after a gunman opened fire on the baseball team last month as it practiced in nearby Alexandria, Va., the House sergeant-at-arms wrote to the commission requesting it extend the ruling broadly.

The shooting has left members of Congress deeply rattled and grappling anew with the risks of being a public official in a time of heightened political tension around the country. Investigators found a list with the names of six members of Congress in a pocket of the gunman, James T. Hodgkinson.

In a June 21 letter seeking the commission’s opinion, the sergeant-at-arms, Paul D. Irving, referred to the shooting and said that House lawmakers had received 950 threats in the first six months of 2017. They received 902 in all of 2016.

On Thursday, Mr. Irving said it was impractical and potentially dangerous to expect the Capitol Police to assess each individual threat against a member fast enough.

“Threat assessments are resource and time intensive,” he told the commissioners. “They require a fair amount of lead time, and unfortunately violence or harassment of members and their families does not always wait for a thorough investigation.”

Since the shooting, House leaders have searched for ways to bolster security for the House’s members as they travel around Washington and through their home districts. They have moved to allocate an additional $25,000 for each member to pay for security improvements at district offices and for security at public events. And they are seeking about $30 million more for the Capitol Police’s roughly $375 million annual budget to add officers and strengthen security infrastructure.

Senate appropriators, for their part, have not moved to include any comparable additional funds in their own version of the legislative branch funding bill, according to Chris Gallegos, the spokesman for the Senate Appropriations Committee. The Senate sergeant-at-arms’s office has renewed efforts to work with members’ offices on security planning, reducing risk and improving communication with local law enforcement officials.

The Capitol Police protect the Capitol and surrounding complex of office buildings and grounds. But unlike the president and other top government officials, most members of Congress are not given official government protection when they leave the Capitol complex. Because of cost, only top House and Senate leaders have Capitol Police details, who follow them wherever they go.

The June shooting left four people wounded, including Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the majority whip. Mr. Scalise’s three-person detail was on the field the morning of the shooting, a fact that lawmakers have credited with helping to contain the carnage. Mr. Scalise remains hospitalized and in serious condition a month after a series of surgeries and at least one infection.

The principal objections to the commission’s opinion initially came from Ellen L. Weintraub, a Democrat, who said she worried that the decision could open the door to a bevy of abuses and questioned why lawmakers did not simply allocate government funds for the cost of home security.

“I do have some concerns,” Ms. Weintraub said, “about the limiting principles. How far could this rationale be used? Could somebody, for example, say, I feel unsafe in my current home, so I need to move to a gated community, and I need to use campaign funds to pay the higher rent and mortgage?”

Ultimately after a series of edits, Ms. Weintraub voted to approve a compromise version of the opinion, which she said satisfied her concerns.

The commission’s decision found rare concurrence among advocates of stricter campaign finance rules and enforcement, even amid worries of potential abuses.

“There is always potential for abuse, particularly because the F.E.C. doesn’t enforce the laws,” said Fred Wertheimer, the founder of Democracy 21, a nonpartisan advocacy group. “But I don’t think you can make the decision here based on potential for abuse. Who knows what might come of this, but on balance, given the circumstances, I think there is a basis for allowing it.”

Craig Holman, a lobbyist for Public Citizen, a Washington watchdog group, added that he hoped the commission and the Capitol Police would monitor how the funds are used and hold anyone who abuses the carve-out accountable.